Giving the idea

15 1 Parks and Boundless Space

15.1 Parks and Boundless Space
Contents list

To impark an area of land is to enclose it with a barrier, which may be permeable or semi-permeable (Figure 15.1). When homo sapiens first erected a fence
to protect an area of land, the worlds first park was made. Outside was danger; inside was safety: for children, crops and domesticated animals. Later,
when communities erected more extensive barriers to protect groups of families, the first settlements came into existence. Kings then began to think about
private parks for their families. When grand cities came to be planned, spatial ideas were often developed in the rulers parks and passed through to the
streets and spaces of the cities in which their dictat ran. This practice no longer operates because, in modern states, rulers are shy of conspicuous consumption.
Park planning, however, remains a crucial aspect of city planning.

Fig 15.2-3 The nineteenth century public park was an oasis in ‘the city of dreadful night’ (top diagram) but greenspace became so extensive that it almost
destroyed the City (bottom diagram).

First in seventeenth century France and later in eighteenth century England, the rulers parks burst from their imparkments. Louis XIV projected the avenues
of Versailles ever outwards, and opened the park to his subjects. His "park became an unbounded space. Capability Browns imagination, leaping the fence,
saw that all nature was a garden. Many of Englands royal and aristocratic parks were opened to the public. In the nineteenth century, special new spaces,
known as "public parks, were provided for the poor. To begin with, these parks were bounded: locked at night and strictly controlled, as oases in the
city of dreadful night (Figure 15.2). Later, they were linked together by parkways. This idea came from Frederick Law Olmsted. He interlaced cities with
parks. But the "parkland was no longer imparked. Greenspace leaked out and almost destroyed the ancient idea of a compact protected city (Figure 15.3).
New cities are not like old cities.

Fig 15.1 Imparkments create park If the space has no boundary, it should not be called a park. And if it has a boundary, the boundary should have a defined
purpose.

15.2 Parks for Edge City?
Contents list

Now, the City of Tomorrow may not contain public parks. Joel Garreau has identified a new type of city: Edge City (Garreau, 1991). Its face is set against
Corbusiers City of Tomorrow. Edge City is that loose agglomeration of express roads, semi-isolated buildings, free car parking and sprawling urbanization
that one finds the world over. Outside financial centres, they are the most economically active regions of the postmodern world. Garreau looks at Edge
City with the dispassionate gaze of a journalist. To him, Edge City is "what the consumer wants: safety, comfort, and convenience. Accessibility for the
rich, inaccessibility for the poor. The high walls of Edge City are time and distance. Within these walls, there is no public open space, which bothers
the professionals:

Designers who wish to make Edge City more humane frequently advocate that public parks and public places be added to match the piazzas of the cities of
old. That sounds great. But as George Sternleib points out... "They dont want the strangers. If it is a choice between parks and strangers, the people
there would sooner do without the parks. (Garreau, 1991)

Safety comes first, so they dont want parks. But safety was the whole reason for making parks! With its defining characteristic removed, no wonder the
modern park is about to die. Louis XIV started the process; Capability Brown carried it further. Municipal authorities, in many countries, have completed
the process. No boundary means no park. Therefore all the imparked space in Edge City will be privately owned: as golf course, garden or theme park.

Kevin Lynch, a great urban planner, once observed that "our city parks occupy only one small niche of the universe of open-space forms. His plea for greater
diversity was well made, but Lynch surely erred when he included parks within the "universe of open space forms. Parks should not be open spaces. They
should not be places where people are allowed to do anything. The very essence of a park is safety. Bounded space must not be confused with boundless space,
though both are necessary. History is a good starting point for reconsidering park functions.

15.3 Public Park History
Contents list

Eastern park wall

Bounded space in Egypt

The Agora in Athens

At the dawn of European history, on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, land was imparked for four non-agricultural uses. The Egyptians made domestic
gardens and temple gardens. The Assyrians also made hunting parks. The Greeks added public gardens, as meeting and market places protected within city
walls. The Romans continued to make public meeting places, but the other three types of park became fused in the imperial villa and its progeny. Roman
palace gardens, such as those made by Hadrian and Diocletian, merged the historic objectives of park-making. Parks were made for domestic pleasure, for
exercise, for hunting, for the fine arts and for celebration of the emperors godlike status. As such, they became models for Renaissance villas, in Italy
and then throughout Europe, from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century. North European park and garden designers paid their respects to this ancestry
when they included Greek and Roman statuary in their designs (Figure 15.4). So do all those gardeners who place concrete casts of Diana, Flora and Aphrodite
amongst the roses of their suburban "villas.

Fragments of classical park prototypes can be found in modern parks, but they are decayed and confused, like the statuary. Most urban parkspace is non-domestic
garden, non-temple garden, non-hunting park. Those broad acres of green that look so fine on planners plans and tourist brochures offer remarkably scant
value to the public. They provide little to see and very little to do. A few years ago, at lunchtime on a hot Sunday, I visited Sheffield Botanical Gardens,
a well-known public park in one of Englands older industrial cities. There were about 30 people lazing on the grass or giving their dogs an opportunity
to relieve themselves. I then drove 15@tkm over the hills to Chatsworth, a famous old landscape park, still owned by the Dukes of Devonshire. There, ten
times as many people were queuing to pay money and enter the grounds. Why cant modern cities provide the outdoor space that people want? Partly, it is
because too many are owned by municipalities, theoretically devoted to the "greatest happiness of the greatest number, but in practice over-willing to
entrust parkspace to operatives whose training is in the use of machinery and chemicals for ornamental horticulture.

To those who fear or mourn the death of "the public park, I offer a simple solution: distinguish parkspace from greenspace; bounded space from boundless
space; "the public from "the park. Use walls and fences to protect imparked land from unimparked land. Cities need both. But the two should never be
confused. As with public space and private space, both are desirable. Each square metre of those Olmstedian green necklaces, which push their way through
the cities of the world, should be systematically re-evaluated. Some of the land should be properly imparked, to make it safe and to make it special (Figure
15.5). The remainder should be properly disimparked, to set it free. Only thus will the peoples needs be met.

Fig 15.1 Classical statue

15.4 Instinct and Public Parks
Contents list

Interesting though history is, it may not define what modern people want from parks. It would be better, surely, to employ social survey techniques and
discover precisely what people do want. A Swedish researcher, Patrik Grahn, has done just this. His survey included questionnaires, sent to 2200 organizations,
diaries kept by 40 key organizations, 1600 reviews of park qualities and interviews (Grahn, 1990). After collecting the data, a cluster analysis was carried
out. Grahn found that the hundreds of activities that take place in parks could be analysed into eight types of "park character, as shown in Table 1.

Table with 3 columns and 10 rows
HISTORIC TYPE
PARK CHARACTER
ACTIVITIES

Hunting park
Wilderness park
Hiking, Camping, Excursions
Hunting park
Species-rich park
Observing, species, Collecting species,
Hunting park
Forest park
Physical culture, Running
Hunting park
Play park
Play equipment, Building, Growing, Animals
Hunting park
Sports park
Arena sports
Domestic garden
Peaceful park
Garden studies, Games for fun
Public garden
Festive park
Social meetings, Togetherness
Temple garden
Plaza park
Architecture study, Garden study
Table 15.1 Eight types of park character (based on Grahn, with the addition of a list of historic open space types)
table end

Salmon inherit knowledge of how to navigate their ancient routes around the globe. Humans, presumably, are born with a great deal more knowledge. We lack
details of what it is, but many of our tastes and preferences, including those in open space, appear to derive from our evolutionary past. William McDougall
sought to explain human behaviour in terms of instinct (McDougall, 1908). Later psychologists turned away from the idea, because human behaviour is less
stereotyped than the territorial, nesting and courtship rituals that can be observed in animals. Instead, psychologists now refer to human "drives and
"motivated behaviour, of which some are conscious and some unconscious.

The principal human instincts are thought to be flight and fear; repulsion and disgust; curiosity and wonder; pugnacity and anger; self-abasement and subjection;
self-assertion and elation; parental instinct and tenderness; reproduction and sexual desire; food and water seeking; gregariousness; acquisition; construction.
Grahns analysis draws from the concept of instinct. He argues that in many outdoor activities we relive the lives of our ancestors, and re-exercise their
instincts. The types of place we look for are the types of place they looked for. Too often, the town dweller is like a salmon in a fish farm: trapped
but with an instinctive longing for endless space. We seek what the Kaplans have described as a "restorative experience, such as one can obtain in wilderness
(Sorte, 1989). This requires an experience of extent, of fascination, of compatibility and of "being away.

To walk through a forest with curiosity and wonder is to walk in the footsteps of our distant ancestors. To collect nuts, berries and mushrooms, to hunt
and to fish, is to behave as they did. Finding a mate necessitates instinctive behaviour. Building a shelter, cooking out of doors, sleeping under the
stars, swimming in a river and sailing a boat were fundamental skills, which are but slightly available in modern campsites, far away from urban areas.
Finding ones way, taking precautions, withstanding the elements, developing new concepts, encountering danger and returning in safety were the everyday
patterns of human life, as they are still the patterns of many holiday activities: mountaineering, orienteering, sailing, hunting, surfing, horse-riding,
cycling. Yet few of them are permitted in conventional urban "parks. Imparked land is space for the nester, not space for the hunter. When land is domesticated,
made safe, well kempt and strewn with signboards, its attraction for the hunter disappears. During my teens, I became a vegetarian on compassionate grounds,
but in stalking the hills with my camera, hoping to capture a wild animal or a sunset, my behaviour remains that of the hunter. My blood-lust has been
sublimated.

Space for the Hunter and Space for the Nester are the two basic requirements. They differ, utterly, from the bland categories of "active and "passive
recreation. Behind the designation of urban greenspace as "parkland lies the covert objective to make it all into Nester Space. Better by far to make
a distinction between Bounded and Boundless Space. The former should be safe and parklike. The latter can be wild, risky, and natural. Only in boundless
space can you hear the Call of The Wild.

15.5 Planning Urban Parks
Contents list

A time can be imagined when humanity becomes so urban that the biological memory of a pre-urban existence begins to fade. But that time is millennia away,
one hopes. Human societies retain a deep love and longing for rivers and oceans, fields and forests, wildness and wet. This demands satisfaction. How?
Some primordial tastes can be satisfied in public open space.

Freud said the basic human instincts were "sex and aggression. He forgot about food, possibly because his wife prepared it. This is how we can cater for
basic needs in parks:

Aggression can and does find an outlet in competitive sport.

Sex can find some accommodation in a Park. Dancing is said to be the vertical expression of a horizontal idea. Perhaps sunbathing is the passive expression
of an active idea. People enjoy taking off their clothes, lying in the sun and being with others who behave in a similar same way. Where can they go to
do this in the city? Two conditions must be satisfied: there must be some water that they can think they are going to plunge into; and there need to be
many secure niches, for the first people to undress. When everyone does so, it becomes an inconspicuous activity. Jane Jacobs talks about a Pervert Park
(Jacobs, 1962). One assumes this is a politically incorrect reference. But why shouldnt homosexuals have their own park, if they wish it? Nudist beaches
have some tendency in this direction.

Cooking is one of the defining aspects of a civilized society. I wish there were places to cook out of doors in English parks, as there are in German parks.
It would not be right for every park, but it would be a fine activity for some parks.

Hunter-gatherer instincts: Humans have spent longer as hunter-gatherers than as city dwellers. The instincts developed during that time are not easily forgotten.
But they have little accommodation in urban parks.

Britain had a vigorous campaign against fox-hunting. I sympathize with the objectors, but if hunting is to be banned, there must be other outlets for the
hunter instinct.

Fishing is immensely popular. If it is not to be banned as a blood sport, it should be accommodated in urban parks.

It is a great pleasure to walk through the woods, gathering firewood, nuts, blackberries and mushrooms.

Swimming in an unbounded space is far more exhilarating than swimming in an artificial pool.

When salmon are caged in fish farms, one imagines that their instinct to roam the ocean is cruelly frustrated. Perhaps humans suffer in a similar manner
when denied opportunities to hunt and gather their own food.

15.6 Boundless Public Open Space
Contents list

Fig 15.6 Birkenhead Park in 1984

During an Anglo-American conference on Green Cities, in 1984, one morning was spent on the edge of Birkenhead Park (Figure 15.6). Several lecturers, myself
included, were heard waxing lyrical on how this grand old Mother Of The Peoples Park had sired so many fine daughters, in Britain and around the world.
At lunchtime, Birkenheads park managers proudly led the delegates forth to see the Peoples Park in full bloom. It was virtually empty. Round one corner
we found some children who had climbed over the railings to catch pathetic fish in a dreary pond. Quickly, the park managers bawled them out. Then a chain-saw
was heard, as some operatives removed a fallen tree. "What will you do with the wood?, asked an American delegate. "Burn it, said the manager. "But dont
people live in those houses? Dont they have fires in their houses? Dont they need fuel for their fires?, she asked with rising indignation and hysteria.
"Perhaps, replied the park manager, "but distribution would cause administrative problems. Huh.

Better if they had left that Birkenhead tree where it fell. Since Gerard Manley Hopkins, a catholic priest, wrote Inversnaid, in 1881, immense tracts of
wilderness have been tamed and his poem has become popular (Figure 15.7). Rich people can travel to wilderness areas for their vacations. Poor urbanites,
in rich and poor countries, are deprived, at great management expense and great social cost, of genuine contact with the world that sustained their ancestors.
The solution is to create new commons and new forests, in the medieval senses of these words. Their provision is a vital aspect of planning for sustainability.
In modern Europe, the only space where one can feel free is the seashore. There, you can collect driftwood, catch crabs, run, swim, take off your clothes,
build fires, sleep, experience nature. T.S. Eliot wrote, in The Waste Land, that "In the mountains, there you feel free. But on the seashore, one can
be freer still.

A medieval common was an area of land in private ownership, over which defined members of the public had defined rights: piscary (fishing), turbary (digging
turf), estovers (gathering wood for fuel) and grazing. New Commons would be comparable, but different. The land would remain in private ownership. The
public would acquire defined rights, by sale or by rent, for limited periods or in perpetuity, by voluntary sale or by compulsory purchase. Owners would
continue to enjoy certain privileges but, if rewarded, would provide services to the public, such as the maintenance of footpaths, hedges and other vegetation,
including orchards. Visitors to these New Commons would enjoy defined rights of access, as pedestrians or horse riders, and defined rights to hunt for
nuts, mushrooms, fruits, fuel and, if agreed, animals. They could also have grazing rights.

Medieval forests were not woods. Some had very few trees. Primarily, they were hunting reserves. Robin Hood lived on, not in, Sherwood Forest. It was a
heathland. It was not a wood. There were hardly any trees. And his merry men are unlikely to have worn green, which would have made them conspicuous. Forests
were areas of land controlled by forest laws. Public rights in forest lands were similar to those in common lands. These rights pertained to local communities.
If the forest was fenced, it was to keep animals in, not people out.

So where is the land that can be used to make New Commons and New Forests? Many countries, especially Japan, protect farmland near urban areas. In Britain,
it is known as Green Belt. Most is used for agriculture, though much is owned by non-agricultural organizations. One day, the land may be needed again
to grow food. But not in the foreseeable future. European and American agriculture is in chronic oversupply and the case for over-protecting farmers with
subsidies is weaker in the vicinity of large towns than in remote districts. When one hears farmers claiming inalienable rights to fat subsidies and Trespassers
Keep Out signs, one is reminded of the ferrymen and watermen who once transported people across Europes rivers. They were fiercely opposed to bridge building,
because it threatened their "historic rights to charge for a service that was no longer needed.

In much of northwest Europe, the public already has rights over the unbuilt land in and around towns. They vary from country to country but include rights
to control building development, rights of access and rights to protect "nature (including scenic, hydrologic and biological resources). These rights
should be codified by declaring New Commons and New Forests. As the Old Commons and the Old Forests were often taken by law, it would not be inappropriate
to use statutory powers expressly for this purpose, albeit with a great deal of local diversity. These areas of public greenspace would be safe when busy
but could be unsafe at other times. The general public would have rights of access, and the local public could have other rights, and duties, especially
connected with food and fuel. "Public ownership can take many forms: central government, municipalities, water suppliers, churches, colleges, and charitable
trusts.

Unbounded space can take its physical character from the natural environment. Here are some of the possibilities:

Landform. Apart from life, topography is the greatest thing on earth. Yet in cities, we mostly bury it. Rivers are piped, hills buried, woods felled. The
solution is to make topographic greenspace: hill space; valley space; river space; quarry space; beach space.

Ecology. It is desirable to have a good network of natural habitats to accommodate the plant and animal communities that are native to a locality. Near
to where I live, it would be appropriate to have a heath, a marsh, a beechwood, an oakwood and a watermeadow.

Hydrology. Wet places, dry places, marshy places and water bodies are attractive and necessary.

Climate. Hot places, cold places, sheltered places, windy places and sunny places can each be attractive. Too many open space planners have regarded heat
and cold as "problems in need of a solution, as though there was some ideal of a perfect climate, like the perfect set of dentures. Rather, we should
celebrate climatic diversity. Cities should have spaces that catch the strongest winds, the hottest sun, the most water, the heaviest shade and the hardest
frost. By turns, all are welcome.

Fig 15.7 T.S. Eliot

15.7 Bounded Urban Parks
Contents list

There always were good reasons for bounding space and there always will be. Broadly, they may be classified as human, rather than natural. The ancient reasons
for imparking land were both domestic and religious, as discussed above. Modern parks can have a variety of human-oriented themes. At present, even in
the greatest cities, park space is insufficiently diversified. Most is under municipal ownership. Most is paved, gardened or managed to death. Orwells
Ministry of Peace made war. With equal perversity, municipal managers have made green deserts and grey deserts, using mown grass and concrete. It is time
to set about the enjoyable task of differentiating urban space according to considerations of mood, age, ownership, history, culture, religion, ethnicity,
politics, landform, habitat, climate and, yes, function. Diversification is the subject of
the next essay,
but Figure 15.8 (below) illustrates the argument so far.

Park Gates (Green Park in London)

15.8 Bounded yet Unbound Parks
Contents list

There is one very special type of urban space that is park yet not-park, bounded yet unbound. It depends on an osmotic membrane, which draws people in instead
of keeping them out. As urban designers are seriously infatuated with this type of space, there have been endless tiffs and tribulations. So little has
their essence been appreciated, they are named simply as The Place, Plaz, Plaza, or Piazza, depending upon which European language you are speaking. Where
a Place just grows, it often succeeds. Where urban planners make a forced marriage between a people and a Place, they usually fail. The Places they plan
do not attract those gay crowds of smartly dressed fun-loving folk who appear in the slick sketches that persuade clients to implement such schemes. This
has led to great anguish, to a little research, and to a few worthwhile conclusions.

Camillo Sitte launched our modern debate on Places (Sitte, 1938). As an architect, he took the problem to be geometrical. Systematic studies of the old
squares of Europe led him to conclude that the main factors behind a Good Place were plan, section and layout. Plans, he believed, should be irregular
but enclosed. The typical size of "the great squares of the old cities was found to be 155 mby 63 m (465 ft by 190 ft). Christopher Alexander accepted
that such large spaces could work in great cities but argued that most squares should have a diameter of about 20 m (60 ft). Otherwise "they look good
on drawings; but in real life they end up desolate and dead (Alexander, 1977). In cross-section, Sitte believed the width should be equal to the height
of the principal building, while the length should be no more than twice this dimension. In layout, Sitte took it as a cardinal principle that statues
should be placed on the edges of Places, never in the centres which, as Vitruvius said, should be left for gladiators.

Americans have long admired the squares of old Europe. In making comparable spaces they have had a few great successes, like New Yorks Paley Park, and
many great disappointments. Jane Jacobs considered four squares in Philadelphia, with similar dimensions and at similar distances from the City Hall (Jacobs,
1962). Yet only one of them was "beloved and successful. Why? If urban designers do not have an answer to this question, they should be debarred from
the design of urban squares. Jacobs explanation was that the one popular space, Rittenhouse Square, was surrounded by diverse land uses, which generate
a diversity of open space uses. Of the others, she saw one as a traffic island, one as a Skid Row Park and one as a Pervert Park. While respecting her
judgement, I believe that urban outcasts also need space.

William H. Whyte made an extremely thorough study of Plaza use in New York City, using time lapse photography (Whyte, 1980). Like Jacobs, he saw that some
Plazas were very popular and most were empty. Why? He found that "what attracts people most... is other people. If a Plaza has a good relationship with
a busy street, people will sit there to watch other people. There should be at least 1000 people per hour walking by at noon. Once they are in the Plaza,
"people sit most where there are most places to sit. They like a wide choice of benches, steps, chairs, low walls, pool edges and planters. They also
like a fringe of shops and fast-food outlets. None of these factors, it should be noted, bears any relation to dimensions, cross-sections or the placing
of statues. Plaza planning is more difficult than Plaza design, yet both are important. The space must be bounded yet unbound. Success depends on the exact
character of the bounding membrane.

Piazza Navona, Rome

15.9 The Emotional Colour of Public Open Space
Contents list

This essay can be summarized with a colourful exercise. Please buy a plan of the town where you live. If it is a coloured plan, the "parks will almost
certainly be a uniform shade of yellow-green. Urban squares, pedestrian streets, footpaths and surrounding farmland will probably be white. Lay a piece
of tracing paper over the plan and reach for your marker pens. All the space to which pedestrians have free access should be shaded with a grey tone. This
is the effective public realm. It does not include vehicular space, from which pedestrians are excluded by the danger of losing their limbs or lives. Now
examine the grey pattern you have drawn. Those grey lines and blobs need to be enlivened. Which space should be boundless? Which should be bounded? A marker
pen can be used to show your proposed boundaries. Within these boundaries, you can have special types of garden for plants, people and things that require
protection from the harshness of the city. Outside those boundaries, you can let the people free. It is a good idea to find a map showing what the town
was like a hundred years ago. Did it have heaths, woods, meadows, marshes, beautiful rivers or unspoilt beaches? They can be re-created. Bright colours
should now be applied to the various categories of bounded and boundless space. My own colouring suggestions are made in the next essay.

I hope this exercise will make you enthusiastic about the potential for developing the public realm and enriching public life. As most of the worlds people
will soon live in towns, the need for good public space will become a paramount concern in urban planning. When all the plans and data are stored in a
GIS, specialized maps will be available for cyclists, swimmers, shoppers, ornithologists, campers, walkers, nut gatherers and others too.

"Greenspace?"